Embassy Row

Diplomatic traffic

Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:

Monday

&#8226 Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, who meets President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attends the opening of an exhibit of a 15th-century triptych of the Virgin Mary at the National Gallery of Art and lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery.

&#8226 Androulla Vassiliou, health commissioner of the European Union. She meets with Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Ron Kirk, U.S. trade representative; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services; Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture; and Reps. Diana DeGette, Colorado Democrat; James P. Moran, Virginia Democrat; Adam H. Putnam, Florida Republican; John Sarbanes, Maryland Democrat; and Pete Stark, California Democrat. On Thursday, she holds an 11:30 a.m. news conference at the European Commission delegation at 2300 M St. NW.

&#8226 Anatoly Adamishin, a former deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union. He joins a panel discussion at the United States Institute of Peace on the end of the Cold War. He and Richard Schifter, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, are co-authors of the institute’s new diplomatic memoir, “Human Rights, Perestroika and the End of the Cold War.”

&#8226 Yashwant Deshmukh, director of the Center for Voting Opinion and Trends in Election Research in New Delhi, and Colin Irwin of the Institute of Irish Studies at Britain’s University of Liverpool, a specialist on Kashmir. They discuss the future of Kashmir in a briefing at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

&#8226 Issandr El Amrani, a noted Egyptian writer and blogger, who discusses Mr. Obama’s moves to improve the image of the United States in the Middle East in a briefing at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Tuesday

&#8226 Bishop Laszlo Tokes of the Romanian Reformed Church, who receives the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

&#8226 Martha Karua, a member of the Kenyan parliament, and Paul Muite, a former member, who discuss political reform in Kenya in a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

&#8226 Gulnur Aybet, a lecturer in international relations at Britain’s University of Kent at Canterbury, who discusses political reforms in Turkey and their effect on trans-Atlantic relations in a briefing at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

&#8226 Svetlana Gannushkina, chairwoman of Russia’s Civic Assistance Committee for Refugees, and Elena Milashina, an investigative reporter for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta. They testify on unrest in Russia’s Dagestan region in a hearing before the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe at 10 a.m. in Room 1539 of the Longworth House Office Building.

Wednesday

&#8226 Irakli Alasania, former ambassador to the United Nations from Georgia and now director of the Alliance for Georgia, a political movement opposed to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. He addresses the Brookings Institution on the political conflict in his country.

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